Toward a Sacred Cosmology of Belonging: to Heal the World, We Don't Need Shame or Blame, We Need to Remember and Reconnect

In our search to understand the immense suffering caused by colonization, racism, and centuries of domination, it’s natural to feel anger, grief, even guilt. These are human responses to the recognition that something sacred has been desecrated—that entire peoples, cultures, and ecosystems have been harmed by the actions of empires, institutions, and systems that treat life as expendable.

In response, a wide array of reactionary narratives have emerged—not to offer good-faith engagement, but as strategic deflections. Rather than confronting the enduring legacies of conquest, slavery, and systemic inequality, we see the rise of cultural panic: conspiracies like the so-called “Great Replacement Theory,” Trump's war on history and education, and moral panics over diversity framed as existential threats. These responses are not purely spontaneous—they are stoked and manufactured by those in power, though they also take root in communities through generations of cultural conditioning and fear. Whether intentional or not, these narratives materially function to redirect attention away from systemic critiques and toward imagined enemies, reinforcing a sense of victimhood among dominant groups while leaving the underlying structures of power untouched.

Liberal anti-racist narratives are not entirely blameless. Some narratives, rooted in essentialism or privilege theory, have inadvertently added fuel to the fire by promoting frameworks that were well-meaning but ultimately reinforced dominant culture thinking, friendly to the status quo.

So let's be clear: the path to healing and justice is not about shame, blame, or inverting old hierarchies—it’s about truth, responsibility, and the deep belief that we all have a role to play in creating a world where everyone can belong and thrive. 

No continent or people are inherently good or bad, whether we're talking about Europe, Asia, America or Africa. Every part of the world contains multitudes—histories of violence, yes, but also deep traditions of resistance, mysticism, peacemaking, and wisdom. To flatten any group into a caricature is to surrender to the same binary thinking that fueled colonization in the first place: us vs. them, good vs evil, civilized vs. savage.

This is not a worldview rooted in truth. It is a distortion that repeats the harm it seeks to remedy.

The goal of liberation, in my mind, has never been about demonizing identities or individuals that have been complicit in or benefited from systemic harm. The goal is to dissolve and unlearn the systems and ideologies that have taught us to fear difference, to worship hierarchy, and to dominate life. It's about re-indigenizing our identities and regaining what’s been lost through centuries of separation—from the Earth, from each other, from ourselves. Colonialism, industrialism, and capitalism didn’t just steal land and labor—they fractured our sense of belonging. They taught us to see the world in pieces: humans apart from nature, races divided, worth measured in productivity instead of presence.

To re-indigenize means re-rooting ourselves in place, in kinship, in relationship. It means healing the rupture between mind and body, self and other, human and Earth. It means listening to ancestral wisdom, which can be found across thousands of cultures around the world, and within each of us, encoded in our DNA —what Robin Wall Kimmerer and others call the “original instructions.”

At its core, this is a spiritual and political project: to see again with clear eyes that the forest is not a resource, the river is not a utility, and people are not units of labor. Re-indigenizing is an act of defiance against a system that thrives on disconnection. But more than that, it’s an act of love—for the land, for each other, for the future.

This is how we reclaim our wholeness. This is how we come home.

From a spiritually grounded perspective—whether one draws from Unitarian Universalism, Taoism, Buddhism, animism, scientific pantheism, Sufism (the mystic branch of Islam), African Ubuntu philosophy, Judaism or mystic Christianity—the message is consistent: all of life is sacred. All people possess inherent dignity. The sacred is not confined to one people, one religion, or one culture—it lives and breathes through all of creation.

Mystic Christianity teaches that Christ is not just a person but a presence—the indwelling Logos, the divine spark incarnate in every soul. “What you do to the least of these,” Jesus said, “you do to me.” This is not metaphor. It is mystic truth. God is not somewhere else, watching from afar. God is here, weeping in the oppressed, shining in the eyes of the stranger, speaking in the wounded body of the Earth.

Taoism tells us the Way flows through all things, that rigidity breaks where flexibility flows. 

Buddhism reveals that separation is illusion; that the suffering of one is the suffering of all. 

Animism reminds us that all beings are alive and worthy of reverence. 

Scientific Pantheism sees the sacred not above the world, but as the world, in its wild multiplicity and intimate interdependence. The sacred is not confined to temples or holy books, but dancing in the sunlight on a leaf, in the voice of a stranger, and in the soil beneath our feet.

Judaism teaches that to heal the world—tikkun olam—we must see the divine in one another and act with justice and compassion.

Unitarian Universalism affirms that we are all part of an interconnected web of existence, held together by love and mutual responsibility.

Ubuntu is a South African Zulu word that means “humanity” and describes their philosophy of interconnectedness: “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am." Another saying they have in Zulu is umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu:  “It is through others that one attains selfhood.”

And Sufism, the mystic path of Islam, reveals that the light of truth shines through all sacred traditions—that each is a different lamp, but the light is one. Every sincere path, when walked with love and awareness, can lead us to wisdom, for God (also called the universe and The Way) speaks in many languages, but the heart hears them all.

This is the cosmology that can guide us forward.

It gives us a lens to understand what has gone wrong, and a foundation for transforming the systems that violate the sacredness it affirms. 

When we critique systems like colonialism, racial or ethnic supremacy, capitalism, religious fundamentalism or authoritarianism, we do so not to shame individuals, but to name the forces that have distorted our humanity. These systems degrade everyone—even those who appear to benefit. They teach us to dominate rather than relate, to extract rather than nurture, to fear rather than trust.

To name and challenge these systems is not to shame people of European descent or anyone else—it is to call all of us back to something deeper than identity or tribe: to our shared capacity for love, for wisdom, for transformation. It's about remembering who we are, in full relationship with the community of life. It's about remembering what colonial ideologies taught us to forget.

It is possible to acknowledge deep historical and ongoing harm without falling into the trap of self-deprecation or misanthropy. It is possible to honor diversity without seeing it as a threat to anyone’s existence or identity.

Diversity, when rooted in mutual respect and justice, has never been a threat. It is life expressing itself fully. It is the earth remembering itself in a thousand different languages, rituals, and ways of knowing.

The call of our time is not for any people to disappear or be "replaced," but for false hierarchies to dissolve. For systems of domination to give way to systems of care. For each of us to remember that beneath the stories we’ve inherited or been sold, we are brothers, sisters, kin. We are water and wind, soil and sun, breath and consciousness—interwoven and alive.

Let us build a world worthy of that truth. 

Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.